Riding Rockets - Mike Mullane [111]
The Sun was intense and the cockpit grew uncomfortably hot. I pushed from my sleep restraint and hovered in my underwear a few inches from the glass. In my relaxed state my arms and legs folded inward as if trying to return to their fetal position. I had become a hairy2001: A Space Odyssey embryo.
The forty-five minutes of my orbit “day” drew to an end and I was treated to another space sight of such breathtaking beauty it would challenge the most gifted poet. AsDiscovery raced eastward, behind her the Sun plunged toward the western horizon. Beneath me, the terminator, that hazy shadow that separates brilliant daylight from the deep black of night, began to dim the crenellated ocean blue. High clouds over this terminator glowed tangerine and pink in the final rays of the Sun.Discovery entered this shadow world and I turned my head to the back windows to watch the Sun dip below the horizon. Its light, which to this moment had been as pure white as a baby’s soul, was now being split by the atmosphere. An intense color spectrum, a hundred times more brilliant than any rainbow seen on Earth, formed in an arc to separate the black of earth night from the perennial black of space. Where it touched the Earth, the color bow was as red as royal velvet and faded upward through multiple shades of orange and blue and purple until it dissipated into black. AsDiscovery sped farther from it, the bow slowly shrank along the Earth’s limb toward the point of sunset, diminishing in reach and thickness and intensity, as if the colors were a liquid being drained from the sky. Finally, only an eyelash-thin arc of indigo remained. Then it winked out andDiscovery was fully immersed in the oblivion of an orbit night.
Suddenly the uniform black of daytime space was transformed into the stuff of dreams. The Milky Way arced across the sky like glowing smoke. Other stars pierced the black in whites, blues, yellows, and reds. Jupiter rose in the sky like a coachman’s lantern. For planet and stars alike, there was no twinkle. In the purity of space they were fixed points of color.
I stared down into the dark of the Earth. Lightning flashed in faraway Central American thunderstorms. Shooting stars streaked to their deaths in multihued flashes. To the northeast I could see the sodium glow of an unknown city. At the horizon the atmosphere had a faint glow caused by sunlight scattering completely around the Earth. In this glow the air was visible as several distinct layers of gray.
I watched a satellite twinkle through the western sky. ThoughDiscovery was in darkness, the other machine was far enough to the west to still reflect sunlight.
With the instrument lights off and the Sun gone, the cockpit chilled and I floated back into my restraint to attempt sleep. I had just nodded off when a streak of light flashed in my brain and startled me awake. Veteran astronauts had warned of this phenomenon. The flash was the result of a cosmic ray hitting my optic nerve. The electrical pulse generated by that impact caused my brain to “see” a streak of light even though my eyes were closed. I wondered what those cosmic rays were doing to the rest of my brain.Oops, there goes second grade.
I slept fitfully through the night, waking with each sunrise and whispering, “Wow!” At one point I floated into the lower cockpit to retrieve a drink container and entered a scene straight out of a science fiction movie. A light had been left on in the toilet and it dimly illuminatedDiscovery ’s sleeping crew. They were in their restraints, some pinned to the forward wall, others stretched horizontally across the mid-deck. In the relaxation of sleep their arms floated chest high in front of them. It appeared as if they were in suspended animation. I was tempted to join them in the cool darkness, but the pull of the windows was too great. I floated back upstairs.
Reveille came in the form of rock music. It was traditional for the CAPCOM to provide music for